Geeks Who Lead Podcast
Hear the inside stories of the "geeks who lead at scale" - Directors, VPs and CTOs running software engineering orgs at larger companies with 100+ engineers, and interviews with domain experts who can help those leaders to manage their engineering orgs more effectively.
I'm your host - Peter Bell, I've been helping senior engineering leaders to connect with and learn from their peers since 2010!
This podcast is designed for engineering leaders who want to learn the latest good practices from their peers who are way too busy operating to write an article or publish a book!
Running a software engineering org at scale is hard! You need to manage stakeholder expectations, attract and retain top talent, align and structure your org effectively and keep up with the latest processes and tooling. And that's before we even try to make sense of the potential impact of LLMs and GenAI on managing technical teams.
Our podcast and weekly newsletter provide you with access to hard-won wisdom from top engineering leaders and relevant domain experts. Learn more at https://geekswholead.com/
Geeks Who Lead Podcast
Trust, Delegation and Managing Managers with Raghavendra Prabhu
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
According to Raghavendra Prabhu, CTO of Thumbtack, making the transition from programmer to manager isn’t too much of a stretch since you already understand the issues and stakes of your project. When you take it a step further and begin managing other managers, you’re getting further from the work and making a more indirect impact.
On today’s episode of CTO Connection, Raghavendra discusses what it’s like making the transition to higher levels of leadership and how to balance his desire for control with the need for delegation. Tune in for insights on how to successfully climb the leadership ladder.
- [00:20] - How Raghavendra started his career at Microsoft
- [02:09] - Why search is compelling
- [03:23] - The culture shift moving to Google
- [05:29] - Moving from Google to Twitter
- [08:40] - Scaling teams at Pinterest
- [13:22] - Hiring managers as engineers
- [16:56] - Transitioning from manager to director
- [20:52] - Implementing the mentorship program
- [23:28] - Anticipating and planning
- [26:17] - Fixing the hiring process
- [29:06] - What kind of CTO is Raghavendra?
Raghavendra Prabhu (RVP) is the CTO of Thumbtack and was previously the head of infrastructure at Pinterest and a senior software engineer at Twitter, Google, and Microsoft. Thumbtack is an online services marketplace enabling hundreds of thousands of local professionals from plumbers to DJs to build sustainable businesses by connecting them to millions of customers nationwide.
CTO Connection is where you can learn from the experiences of successful engineering leaders at fast-growth tech startups. Whether you want to learn more about hiring, motivating or managing an engineering team, if you're technical and manage engineers, the CTO Connection podcast is a great resource for learning from your peers!
If you'd like to receive new episodes as they're published, please subscribe to CTO Connection in Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a review in Apple Podcasts. It really helps others find the show.
Podcast episode production by Dante32.